


In Flesh, In Bone

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Amputation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Max Comes Back, Max Whump, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon, Serious Injuries, ambiguously platonic, sometimes i just gotta be mean to max
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: It takes Max a few days of running to notice that the deep pain in his wounded left hand isn't diminishing.





	In Flesh, In Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on tumblr](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/142493583206/watched-fury-road-again-of-course)!

It takes Max a few days of running to notice that the deep pain in his wounded left hand isn't diminishing. That he can't quite feel much else if he prods at the exposed skin above the raggedy scrap-bandage, that there's only really dancing electric twitches up and down his fingers when he tries flexing them.

It wasn't important enough to do anything about back in the Immortan's car, not when there was Furiosa bleeding out and struggling to breathe, and out on the sands again- it's his off hand, anyway. So long as he can shift gears and steady a wheel as he shoots it doesn't much matter if his hand burns and aches and feels a little like someone's slipped a glove lined with spikes on him when he wasn't looking.

When he does finally stop and have a look, he almost wishes he hadn't. Just unwrapping the rag is painful, blood and pus crusted in the fabric, melding with his raw skin. Underneath it's red, swollen, a wet meaty hole through the middle of his palm, a grind of bone-on-bone he's been carrying since that damn harpoon crushed his hand the same time it yanked off the rig's wheel.

Max splashes on a bit of water and it doesn't do a bit of good against the thick sticky mess, only drips down onto the sand- right through the center of the wound, where that damn crossbow bolt speared him.

Gonna be a hell of a scar, he thinks as he wraps it back up with something marginally cleaner than the old rag. Wonders if maybe it'll heal around the hole and leave a gap, if he'll have a new party trick to show off.

It starts to smell not long after that. Putrid enough to clog his nostrils, to send a spear of real worry through him. He checks under the wrapping again, finds the edges of the swollen wound crusted black, sending out alarming tendrils under his skin, the tips of his fingers cold to the touch.

A fat carrion fly buzzes over lazily and Max viciously swats it away before it can land, then tugs his wounded hand close to his chest and tries very hard not to focus on the fact that he can't really feel much of anything from it that isn't disconnected jangling pain anymore. He pours some more water over it, scrubs at the edges of his flesh that feel strange and thick and alien under the sparks of pain as he tries to will his fingers to move.

It's hard to tell if a fever sets it with the way his head is always chittering away, how there's always quiet noises and strange things dancing around the edges of his vision, but soon things slide even further sideways than he's used to and he drifts, curled up in his car with an empty shotgun propped on his knees like it's going to do any good.

Opening his eyes to see a gray-faced Furiosa frowning down at him- that's definitely something his mind has conjured up.

Max echoes her frown and blinks his eyelids shut again, waiting for the vision to clear off, but the sound of her voice saying his name has him snapping his eyes open again because it sounds so incredibly real, different from the ghostly echoes he's used to having rattle around his brain.

"You with me?" she asks, voice hoarse.

Max stares at potentially-a-hallucination Furiosa, then flicks his eyes around to see that he's not at all in his car like he remembers being last but some curtain-walled room, light filtering in from somewhere high up and air cooler than he's breathed since hanging in the Blood Shed.

"Where?" he croaks out around a thick dry tongue, fumbling around to try and sit up. His hand's been swaddled in a thick layer of bandaging, the pain fuzzy and far-away, something he isn't eager to examine closer lest the illusion break and he finds himself back under the baking sun with flies buzzing around him after all.

"Some scav found you," Furiosa tells him, something odd and strained about her expression, "Knew better than to mess with Citadel property. Brought you in hoping for a bounty."

She's not standing, he realizes, but sitting up on the edge of another cot to match the one he's lying on himself, stripped of all her belts and armor. Still healing from everything, he would guess, and feels relieved beyond measure to see that she's alive at all. Her eyes leave his face, land on the bandaged hand he's trying to ignore, strange and numb and _wrong_ feeling somehow.

"I had them save as much as they could," she says, voice hitching, face turning away for a moment.

Max stares at her reaction, then back at his left hand. Tries to flex his fingers and doesn't feel much of anything respond, not even a prickle of numb pain. He swings the hand up close to his face to get a good look, uses his right hand to unpick the bandages, something squirming low in his gut the longer he takes in the shape of it.

The bandages fall away and- his hand isn't really there any more. His thumb sits attached to a slanted lump of flesh that's criss-crossed with thick black sutures, his wrist ending in a jagged stump maybe a third of the way up to where his palm should be.

He's had his fair share of bad injuries, was sure for a while that his blown-out knee would leave him with an entirely dead leg that might need to be cut off, but this-

Max can't do anything but stare helplessly at where an entire chunk of his body used to be, where it should _still_ be. He keeps trying to move his fingers different ways compulsively, sure the illusion will fall apart if he tries hard enough, disbelieving that it's just _gone_.

"Keep the bandages on," Furiosa says, startling him out of his horrified reverie, "If it gets infected again again you might lose more."

He can't help but glance down at where her own arm ends in a stump, cradled against her body now like she wants to keep it safe. He hadn't had the desire nor the time to wonder about it on the road, but it seems glaring suddenly and he wonders how it happened to her, if she too knows the feeling of maggots squirming against aching flesh. 

He needs her help to get the bandages done up again, needs the help of a second hand. Swallows down bitter bile and thinks that at least he still has his thumb, lying strange and alone outside the bulk of the gauze wrappings.

One of the old Vuvalini women comes through a part in the curtains not long after, fusses over Furiosa's condition before turning eyes to Max.

"And you," she says, jabbing a finger at his chest, "If you hadn't run off like that you'd have a hand still. Lucky the sepsis didn't get you either, you damn fool."

Max doesn't say anything in response, only accepts the chastisement she keeps unreeling on him, numb and sick to his core. When she seems satisfied that he's not going to try and skulk back off again she has him drink down some bitter herbal drink that promises to keep him pinned to the cot for a few hours at least anyway.

He gets lucky- in the following days the sutures close well, without becoming infected again, his veins clearing of their poisoning. There's not much need to keep him in the infirmary with a walking wound like that and he finds himself curling up spine-to-spine with Furiosa in her room at night instead, soothed by how easily she keeps breathing as her own healing continues.

Max thinks about running again, finding some engine or even trying his luck on foot, but there's a part of him that's scared to, that doesn't know how he'd be able to manage when he's so handicapped. And then he'll look at Furiosa, or think about any of the many others he's encountered before and feels even more sick and guilty, knowing what's holding him back is only his own self.

The mangled stump he's been left with is an ugly thing that aches viciously more often than not, the scars thick and haphazard, the edges completely insensitive to feeling, the remaining thumb weak and near-useless enough that he wonders why they bothered to keep it at all. He dreams about his hand being on fire, dreams about the bones of his fingers growing out of the ends of his new stump to catch and break against whatever he touches, dreams about more and more slices being taken off until he's left with nothing at all, a ragged hollow socket where his arm should attach to his shoulder.

Furiosa says nothing about it directly, only demonstrates how she's learned to compensate herself, to do up buckles and work machinery and juggle tools with only a single hand. It helps, maybe.

As soon as the scars are closed enough that the healer stops lecturing him about cleanliness and re-infection rates, Max spends every moment he can down in the garages. The car he'd been driving wasn't dragged in with him but it wasn't really his car to begin with- just some junky ex-Buzzard thing he'd found as he wandered away from the Citadel that day, that he'd managed to coax back to life.

There's better cars here anyway, cars that deserve care more. He gets pretty decent at knowing how to keep something between his weak thumb and the stump of his palm, though it doesn't have the strength to do more than hold up the weight of the tool itself. Maybe in time, he thinks, feeling a little bit of something like hope for the first time since he was dragged back here.

Furiosa builds herself a hand to replace the one lost on the road- another replacement for the real one lost somewhere between the Citadel and a dead city to the north, she says quietly one night when one or the other of them has turned on the mattress so they overlap, the mess of his hand covering the smooth nub of her arm. He's pictured doing the same for himself a few times, finding some scrap to make himself something to look a bit like fingers perhaps, or maybe just a hook to hold onto things easier.

He doesn't, though, can't imagine how to make it anything but a mockery compared to the way Furiosa's turned her loss into something powerful, deadly.

When she finishes the prosthesis it's left sitting out on the workbench in the room they share, the design different than the old one but just as much _hers_. There's a second tangle of mechanics next to it, enough like the finished hand that he thinks maybe it's some spare parts, a prototype. It looks more organic than her finished piece, jointed differently, lacking any thick hydraulic attachments.

Max pokes at it curiously, can't see how it would be interchangeable, why she wouldn't put it away with the scraps if there wasn't a use for it.

He nearly jumps when the door opens, not really having intended to ask about any of it but feeling caught-out as she takes in what he's looking at. Furiosa only nods her head down at the pieces in his hand and says, "If you want it."

He blinks at her, confused, looks back down at the collection of metal and leather he's holding. Sees, suddenly, that it doesn't look as if it should fit into place at the end of her arm because it isn't meant to.

"You made this?" Max asks, throat catching before he can say the important part, the 'for me?' It's obvious that she's the one to make it, that she has the skill to craft something that- there's a ring pulley off to the side, about where his thumb would be if he slipped the cupped end of it over his stump. When he gives it a slight tug the fingers twitch, curling in towards the rubbery palm so they can hold onto something.

"You've been getting on fine without," Furiosa replies, stepping further into the room, something shy and uncertain in her eyes, "But it can be helpful."

Max sets the prosthetic hand down on the worktop, her expression flickering to something almost disappointed before he reaches out his good hand to her, draws her in close. "Thank you," he says into the quiet space between them, almost beyond words again.

She smiles back at him, pleased at his acceptance and proud of her work, spends the day next to him at the workbench to get the fit of it right, the details adjusted as he learns how best to work it, hears her share why she made it the way she did.

It's really nothing like having his real hand back but it's sturdy, functional, a constant reminder to him when he eventually does strike out for the wastes again that there's a place willing to try and mend what's been broken, a place he can return to because some part of him already rests there.


End file.
